The Problem with Matthew Ygliesias and Moving to the Center
This is a response to the two articles written by Matthew Ygliesias here as well as several tweets that he has made in response to Bernie.
A Common Sense Democrat manifesto - by Matthew Yglesias:
A tale of two machines: Democrats need to stop shrinking the tent
My argument is going to address what I believe is the purposeful mischaracterisation and strawman of what Bernie is saying. It will also address the idea that what democrats really need to do is improve 2 points in Pennsylvania rather than understand why 160 million people did not vote democrat when faced with a Donald Trump alternative.
The strawman argument of what Bernie is saying is that ‘if only we had run further left on issues then we would have done 2% better in Pennsylvania’. That democrats failed the working class because they weren't able to pass the specific legislation that Bernie wanted to pass. This is not what he is saying and not what he has been saying for years in any way. His argument is simple. Democratic politicians objectively do not represent the interests of the people that they represent. There are many many policies that are extremely popular and passed in every state that allows for referendums. Minimum wage is a good example: It has well over 60% support, passed with a supermajority even in Florida when Rick Scott and Trump both won on the same ticket. Among Democrats, support is even higher, around 87% (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/04/22/most-americans-support-a-15-federal-minimum-wage/). So why did so many democrats vote against it when Bernie put it up to a direct vote? The answer is that when you have a full time minimum wage that is lower than the threshold to receive welfare benefits that is a taxpayer subsidy to the companies that hire them. Well over 10 million people are in this situation, our tax dollars that should be going to create Ygliesias’ ‘robust safety net’ (Point 1 of his manifesto), instead goes straight into the pockets of those who hire cheap labor.
This is what it really comes down to, and one of the biggest reasons for the dramatic drop in the trust in our institutions. Since 2014 it has been shown that the opinions of 90% of the population have zero effect on policy (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B). It doesn't matter what people support because congress does not care, it doesn't affect their ability to get re-elected and ignoring it for the interests of the economic elites actually makes them rich. In a so called democracy where the will of the people is so unimportant it makes perfect sense that after decades of watching Pelosi and Mitch McConnell enrich themselves at the expense of the will of the people, that a new party would emerge; one that is happy to insult both of these people and call them out as corrupt. This is what allowed Trump to get so much power among republicans. He was not afraid to shame these people on the right who were not personally loyal to him, he was able to call them out and if they continued to fight him he would get them kicked out of congress. Of course the democrats have to be better, they should hold representatives accountable when they buck the will of those that they represent, not some authoritarian figure. Unfortunately, the democrats never do this, they never hold their corrupt establishment wing accountable for their corruption.
I understand where one might believe that 90% of this election came down to an “inflation driven anti-incumbancy trend” however there is absolutely no real evidence of this. This seems to me to be an attempt by people like Ygliesias to not look inward at themselves and how their philosophy of incremental economic progress without reforming the political system has failed to materially deliver enough for the people to notice. The central core message of the trump campaign was that congress is corrupt, the media is corrupt, and our institutions are corrupt. You can't ignore that this is a huge part of what he ran on and what so many people connected with.
This message not only is popular, but it is largely true. As much as Matthew Ygliesias talks about which economic or cultural policies the democrats should focus on, he fails to address the largest issue of our political system that also has by far the most consensus around it. We cannot allow blatant legal corruption to continue to poison our politicians and institutions.
Most people think that Nancy Peloci and other establishment democrats are personally corrupt. How can you say that they are wrong? These people supposedly make less than 200k a year but are all ultra millionaires. They receive millions in legal bribes and know exactly which stocks to buy. There is almost 90% agreement among democrats, republicans, and independents that politicians should not be able to trade stocks and yet they continue to do so. This is corruption plain and simple. The failure of democrats to push for unbelievably popular anti-corruption measures is a damning condemnation of them.
What does this lead to? It leads to a super majority of the country believing that politicians are taking money from voters to give it to people that deserve it less. On the republican side the belief is that Biden is letting in millions of illegals and giving them money so that they will vote democrat, while the rest of us believe that they are taking bribes in order to pass legislation that benefits donors and by extension themselves at the expense of the people.
In the last two years from 2022 to 2024 overall trust of the federal government dropped from 34% to 23% (https://ourpublicservice.org/publications/state-of-trust-in-government-2024/). Democrats dropped from 52% to 39% while republicans dropped from 23% to 10%. Belief that our democracy is working well is all the way down to 29% and belief that the impact of the federal government has a negative impact on our society is up to 66%. Among every single demographic trust in government has plunged. When directly asked 74% of people outright say the government is corrupt.
This is not to say that people just hate the federal government inherently, supermajorities of both dems and republicans believe in a strong and competent federal government - just not our current one.
Citizens united passed under a democrat and instead of reacting like when Roe got overturned democrats embraced big money because they thought they might actually benefit more from it than republicans. This was a tragic and fateful mistake. Our tent cannot be so wide that we accept corruption.